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What the New York Times Taught Me Today

This week's revelations, courtesy of the New York Times Sunday Review Section, the only section of the Times I read.

Photo by Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times

1. The article about Japan's nonexistent “lost decade” ("The Myth of Japan’s Failure”) enlightened me to the fact that the American media might just invent narratives to fit in with preconceived ideas about our friends and enemies. Whodathunkit? In this version, America's national anxiety of the ‘80s--on which the plotline to the 1986 American comedic film Gung Ho so firmly hung--transformed into a tempered glee following the 1990 market crash. That, in turn, gave way to the idea that Japan never knew what it was doing in the first place. Reading between the lines, I divined that letting go of this assumption, even in the face of facts—average life expectancy rising by more than 4 years being one—would not only mean that Japan is yet again a threat to America's feeling of supremacy, but that such an acquiescence would revalidate the idea that the Japan's dominance in the ’80s really was a part of a largely successful, if somewhat rocky, economic plan. I would like to point out that this was all laid out prophetically in the final scenes of Gung Ho.

2. The article on the difficulty of keeping resolutions because the body only produces so much will-power juice (“Be It Resolved”) filled me with the hope that at some point the American media’s will to bury its head in the sand will wear off.

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On "will-power juice" - turns out there's evidence that (just like a muscle) if you work on your will power regularly, it gets stronger (see the tail end of http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612052322122442.html). So practices like Lent (40 days of denying yourself things) will help you develop more will power. Our permissive society and its messages of immediate gratification seem almost designed to do the opposite: turn our will power muscles flabby so that we are ripe targets for advertising and manipulation.

Notice how so many of the old school prophets spent time fasting in the wilderness and being hermits? That would be a key part of developing an intense amount of will power.